Live Tunisian Radio Feeds & Lifestyle Blog

Radio IFM

In comparison to most other radio stations in Tunisia, there’s no doubt that Radio IFM is in a completely different category. Having been established in November 2011 it’s certainly one of the newest stations in the country, but as well as this it was the first to concentrate on humour and music in its programming schedule.

Like a lot of the popular radio stations in the country, Radio IFM is based in Tunis and generally covers this region.

What is the history of Radio IFM?

Radio IFM was launched by Hamed Soyah – but it wasn’t without difficulty. This was a man who was absolutely desperate to own his own chunk of the airwaves after working in the industry during his early career. For example, in 2000 he attempted to launch a radio project named Medina, while in 2004 he was rebuffed in his approach to launch a web radio.

However, just like it was for a lot of radio personalities in the country, his fortunes changed in 2011. During the revolution, the media landscape was transformed and this worked completely in favour of Soyah. He was able to approach his long-term associate Sofiane Boussetta, who was able to finally grant the request for his radio station to be brought live.

What content does Radio IFM broadcast?

As we touched upon previously, Radio IFM is much different to most of its competitors and generally focusses on humour and music.

In relation to the former, the station broadcasts a selection of sketches from comedy shows every hour. These sketches can arise in Tunisia, Arabic and French, meaning that they really do target the masses. As well as this, the radio station has its own humour team which are unsurprisingly charged with the task of producing such content for the airwaves.

As well as the humour, Radio IFM pays significant attention to music. It splits the content evenly between Eastern and Western music, as well as concentrating on some older material from the 1980s. This is another Tunisian radio station that does commit to local artists as well and is particularly renowned for covering music from the Tunisian underground genre.

We should also point out one of the “specialist” segments on the station, which is dedicated to the famous Egyptian signer Oum Kalthoum. She is played every day on the station, meaning that there is also a classical tint to the content.